Thursday, April 30, 2009

Breaking a Rule for Peter Buffett, and We Hope Neil Young Doesn't Mind

We have a few rules here at NMTU.One is "No Yahoo Message-Board Language."By that we mean that the commentaries offered by readers should have no "LOL"-type nonsense and no all-lower-case run-on sentences, no cursing and no mindless personal retribution.Some readers don't get it--a lot, actually--and their comments are left in our inbox, never to see the light of day. 383 of them, at last count, over our 4 year history.A second is "No Advertising."Since Day One we have not used Google Adwords or any other form of advertising on this site, nor do we intend to. We'd like to think it's an ethical stance, the way Neil Young refused to let corporate sponsors run his tours. But mainly we're just control freaks who worry about the dilutive effect of other people's messages interfering with our own.Hey, maybe Neil's a control freak, too. In any case, there'd be worse examples to follow.A third rule is we don't shill for anybody.The average blog-reader might not realize it, but most bloggers receive emails from PR people on a daily basis. Dozens each week.The PR flaks are looking to promote a website or a book, or frequently an author who knows all about some topical subject...and if you want to talk to the author, call this number.(Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne's flak did this during the financial crisis last fall, as if a CEO of a public company had nothing better to do than yap about his conspiracy theories regarding the economy. As we recall, Byrne was taking credit for predicting the financial crisis, even though his company, which should have benefitted mightily from the trade-down effect as did Wal-Mart, Family Dollar and a host of others, wasn't exactly knocking the cover off the ball like those well-managed retailers.)All this is by way of saying we're going to post something here for somebody else, for the first time ever.And we're doing it just because this individual's PR person asked nicely, several times.Also, in doing our research for "Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett's Omaha," we liked what we learned about the individual this PR person represents.Finally, the event being promoted might just be the only not-for-profit gathering during the Berkshire annual shareholders meeting.So here goes: our first, and probably last, act of publicizing something entirely for the sake of publicizing something.

Warren Buffett’s son, Peter, will be returning to his hometown for an evening of ‘Concert and Conversation’ at The Rose theater. All proceeds from ticket sales are going toward the Omaha-based foundation, Kent Bellows Studio and Center for the Visual Arts.

Peter’s ‘Concert and Conversation’ serves as an entertaining and informative look into the life of a man with a truly unique upbringing. His open discussion about the lessons he's learned as the son of one of the most noteworthy investors of our time and its effect on creating the man he's become, acts as a true testament that life is never a straight road.

The evening will include live performances of selections from Peter’s album releases including his latest, Imaginary Kingdom, punctuated with videos from his film/television work and philanthropic activities.

EVENT DETAILS:An Evening of Concert and Conversation with Peter BuffettWHEN: Saturday, May 2nd at 7:30 pmWHERE: The Rose, 2001 Farnam Street, Omaha, NETICKETS: $42, with $25 of the cost being tax deductiblehttp://rosetheater.org/season-events.asp